


gilt and crimson

by leiascully



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Community: dogdaysofsummer, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-08
Updated: 2006-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rumour of the riots drifts through the rooms at ankle level, like old fog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gilt and crimson

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Marauders  
> A/N: The prompt was "riots".  
> Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ and all related characters are the property of JK Rowling and Scholastic. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Sirius is not allowed to go down to those parts of town, but he hears the whispers in the corners of the big house. Vulgar Muggle violence, his mother says, and splays her white fingers over the white tablecloth. Sirius thinks he can see the bones through her thin flesh, polished and fine like the family silver. The rumour of the riots drifts through the rooms at ankle level, like old fog.

He wonders if the Army still wears scarlet, with the white crosses and the gold buttons. He thinks of the soldiers in the red coats and white breeches, black boots gleaming against the grey of the street and the grey of the commonfolk rabbling in the alleys. He thinks he hears the crack of rifles and the shudder and rattle of the bombs. He imagines, later, the grey faces of passersby as they avoid looking at the crimson spatter over the faded walls, and the pale faces of the factory girls in their sombre dresses, walking slowly with the black bags in their arms past the quick hopeless ghosts of the rebels to the slow death of the assembly line.

He writes this down in a blank journal with gold edging, the romance of the soldiers and the Dickensian despair of the dying Muggles that moves him in ways he does not understand. Later he shows the page to Remus, who says nothing, but touches the page in silence.


End file.
